


the sad song intermission

by orphan_account



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 10:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1263643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ryan didn't see it from the beginning. it takes him a while to catch up. predictably.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the sad song intermission

**Author's Note:**

> i can't believe i'm writing rpf, i always thought i would draw the line at that. but last night at about 3:30am i stumbled to the computer screen to write the first two parts to this and then when i woke up this morning i just kept it going. welp. anyway. takes place canonically but who am i to say any of this ever happened, i'm a writer not a conspiracy theorist. i guess that's my disclaimer. enjoy.

He should have known it from the first time, but it takes him a while to catch up. Predictably.

Brendon’s breath is close to his ear, laughing, and he says, “I knew you weren’t gonna pussy out on us.”

The water is warm around him, and he feels so viciously free, like he can do anything in the world. His toes find solid earth beneath him and his hand curls around Brendon’s hip, and, well.

He thinks, idly, that no one has looked more beautiful.

…

Later, when the salt dries on his tongue, and his hair is still filled with the breeze, sand in between his toes, he collapses next to Brendon and breathes out through his nose.

Brendon’s hands are shaking, his lips trembling. Ryan doesn’t know what to say. He just laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and Brendon takes that as a cue, too. He laughs like he doesn’t know what’s so goddamn funny.

Ryan doesn’t know what’s so goddamn funny. He kisses him on the corner of his lips, softly, and says, “Sleep,” like it’s an order.

His stomach churns for the rest of the night, too much, and he doesn’t find sleep for a long time.

…

 It’s not a secret, which he finds funny, because he always thought that’s how these things sort of went – in secret. But they saw them, that night in Myrtle Beach, ducked over each other in the dunes, and –

No. Not a secret.

All the same, Ryan keeps it quiet, doesn’t talk about it much. Tries to make it seem nonchalant. Brendon becomes the non-boyfriend, sitting up with him in the lounge until four, tracing patterns into his wrist when he isn’t paying attention.

Sometimes, his nails dig in hard enough to crush bone, creating a home for himself in Brendon’s skin, and Brendon lets him, doesn’t complain, just says, “ _Please._ ”

…

He should have figured it out from the beginning, but Ryan is a goddamn fucking idiot, so he doesn’t. Brendon’s lips are at his neck, biting, just soft enough, and he tries not to squirm into it, doesn’t want him to know how much he _wants_ , but then he hears it against his skin.

Ryan swallows soundly. “Brendon.”

To his credit, he doesn’t flinch at all. “Yeah. I know.”

That’s how you fall in love with someone. You fool yourself into believing that the little touches, the hand on the shoulder, the kisses at the corner of the lips, you make yourself believe that they mean something.

Ryan says, “You know what this is,” and he says it like a plea, like a warning.

Brendon just nods, but the moment is gone. He rolls off of him, and the ceiling suddenly seems very close, too close, like there’s no space between them at all.

…

The days are shorter and Ryan is restless, a ticking time bomb thrumming under his skin, and he doesn’t know when it’ll go off.

“Happy birthday,” Brendon says, and his breath is hitting Ryan’s left shoulder blade, his arms wrapped around his waist, and it feels like love. He doesn’t admit it. It feels like love.

Seattle blossoms before them and Ryan wants to take it all in. Never wants to forget. He will, though. That’s the thing about good memories. They have a time limit, just like the bad ones. Time heals painful memories but sometimes it accidentally heals the good ones. Ryan doesn’t want this to go away.

He sucks down on the cigarette, feeling short of breath. If Brendon notices the shaking, he doesn’t ask about it, just tucks his chin into the crook of Ryan’s neck, breathes in, as if he could inhale him like second smoke.

…

When they were good, they were _good._ Ryan would steal closed-mouth kisses that made his stomach drop, trace the curve of his collarbone with his tongue, watch him with rapt attention and anticipation as if he knows, always knows what comes next.

The kisses were deep, full of promise, things that they don’t say slotted between their teeth. When they were good.

Eventually, Ryan’s lips on his jaw make him flinch, and he sees it. He notes it. Eventually Brendon just looks tired. He doesn’t get it, at first, because he doesn’t know any better. All those time ignoring the words pressed into his skin. His home inside of Brendon was rotting away.

He knows what he wants, but can’t give it to him. He can give him this. Stowed away kisses, the little touches that mean something, soft laughter into each other’s mouths. He can give him all of this but he cannot give him _that_.

That’s how you fall out of love with someone. You realize the inevitable, and suddenly it seems like you’re counting off the days. Ticking the hours on your fingertips. He can’t give him what he wants and suddenly, it makes everything else so very _not enough_.

…

Ryan is coked up out of his mind the first time he says that he loves him, and something inside of him breaks, a well that he can drink from. Brendon shoves him off, and Ryan’s palm itches, his fingers twitching, aching to be touching him.

“Not exactly how I imagined you’d say it,” Brendon mutters, and Ryan thinks at first that he’s going to be furious, he’s going to launch into an uncharacteristic fit of rage and hit him, and he would welcome it, he would embrace the hit if it means that Brendon feels anything more than apathy. Anger he can stand. Indifference is worse.

Ryan can’t help himself. “How did you imagine I’d say it?”

Brendon’s eyes are wide and dark, his lips just swollen enough to be noticeable. “I had a few different scenarios in my head.” He doesn’t smile but the corner of his lip quirks up, just a little, on reflex.

Aching urgency fills Ryan’s lungs but he doesn’t move forward because there’s something else in Brendon that he didn’t anticipate before. No, definitely not.

He can give him anything. Anything in the whole fucking world. Lyrics to sing, words to memorize, kisses on his jaw, kisses down his chest and on his cock, anything in the fucking world, but he can’t give him the one thing. Brendon looks very tired. Ryan wonders how long he’s looked so fucking tired.

Brendon rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “Maybe we should –“

Ryan exhales softly. “I can’t give you that.”

He doesn’t clarify but Brendon knows, and he doesn’t say anything else. Just shakes his head, slowly, imperceptibly. “I know that,” he says. He looks exhausted. “I figured as much.”

He knew it from the start. Ryan wonders how he always knew. This apathy is something different, something he didn’t think about. But now it’s all he can see. There’s no escaping it. Brendon’s eyes dart everywhere, avoiding looking right at him, anywhere but him, and Ryan’s skin buzzes with emotion and coke and so much, so much. He doesn’t have anything else to say.

He never has anything to say, but Brendon loved him once. All the same.

…

The fighting starts and stops, a stuttering engine, and it happens gradually, the impending split. Maybe Brendon knew it would end that way. Ryan didn’t.

That’s how you fall out of love with somebody. It doesn’t happen all at once. It happens slowly, the thrumming beneath his fingertips marking off the days, and then it all comes together. Every puzzle piece slots in and the picture becomes clearer.

Ryan says, “I quit.”

Brendon doesn’t look surprised. He maybe even looks relieved. “Oh.”

He says it just to say it but there’s no disbelief in his tone. Ryan knows when he’s lying. He’s fucked him enough times to know him like the back of his hand, each wire and synapse, every ripple of his skin. He knows him well enough to say that he saw it coming, maybe even hoped.

There are a lot of reasons. Brendon doesn’t list them, but Ryan knows them anyways. The coke. The music. The sex was never the problem. Definitely not the sex. Just what the sex meant and didn’t mean. What the sex was and what it could’ve been.

Ryan can give him just about anything but what he really wants. He watched Brendon from the very beginning, watched him give a shit, watched him fall in love. Watched him get back on his feet and fall out of it. He watched him and didn’t even try to step in and change it. Maybe that’s the poet in him. Letting the world do its own bidding. No interference.

Sometimes, Ryan is such a fucking cliché that he wants to explode.

…

The times together, after that, are fleeting. They fuck a couple more times but it’s hard and fast and afterwards, they don’t look at each other or even say anything, really. Brendon looks disappointed in him whenever he sees him and that’s not okay, but Ryan doesn’t have the energy to fix it.

The last time he sees him feels like the last time but Ryan isn’t good at figuring out that kind of shit. He’s never been good at planning ahead or looking forward or all of that adult shit. Brendon looks at him and says, “Take care of yourself, man.”

Ryan nods tiredly. “Yeah.”

At least Brendon cares enough to not want him to die. His fingertips ache to touch him, but he refrains. He knows his place now. At least now he knows. He’s got some kind of self-control.

When Brendon walks away, it feels final. Ryan’s hands are shaking, and he curses himself, for not knowing better. For being a shitty fucking friend and a worse non-boyfriend. He should’ve said it before, without something wiring his system to make him _go_ , but he didn’t know how before. He didn’t know the words to use, how to say them. All the words in the world at his disposal and a mind composed of poems and songs, and he could not figure out how to tell him that he loved him.

He supposes it doesn’t matter, in the end.

All the same.


End file.
